Bits Of Leonard Ravenhill

Leonard Ravenhill is a name that I have only recently become familiar with. He was a close friend of A.W. Tozer and you will find much of the same wisdom in both men. I am hearing a clarion call around the world for men and women, who have long been asleep in their faith, to wake up from their slumber. These words below, hold us to a higher standard of faith and practice. We could do no less for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

“A Roman Catholic priest startled us not very long ago by saying that for 25 years he had been sitting in the confessional, listening to the confessions of men and women. He said he heard (of) murders, rapes, adultery, and fornication. He met men and women who have broken every law of God and man with repetition. But never in 25 years had anyone ever confessed to being covetous. Covetousness! We wrap it up and call it ambition. We may call it business or something, but right down in the middle of those things is a rotten word called “covetousness.” Paul called it idolatry!”

“I’m sick to death of the so-called Christianity of our day. What’s supernatural about it? When do people come out of the sanctuary awed and can’t speak for an hour because God has been in glory there? Dear God, as soon as they get out, they’re talking football, or sports or something or there’s going to be a big sale downtown or somewhere. We are not caught up into eternity!”

“God is taking His hands off of America. We’ve had so much light and we’ve rejected it.”

“I believe every church is either supernatural or superficial. I don’t believe there’s any middle ground.”

“In the early church, signs and wonders, and miracles followed. They cast out demons, blindness, and paralysis. That’s normal Christianity! We’re so sub-normal, if we ever became normal, they (the world) will think we’re abnormal.”

“We speak thousands of words every day and all these words are accumulated: the good words, the bad words, the criticized words… we’re so flippant with our words; we’re so easy with our criticism. We stab and we injure and we hurt, and God is going to try all my words before a thousand-million people. Every word you say is going to be played back some day. The Word of God says man shall give an account for every word that he has spoken.”

“I read through Hebrews 11. These staggering men and women through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtain the promises, stopped the lions; women received their dead raised to life again. All the devilish things (they endured) and not one ever had a Bible! Well, in God’s Name, (what) are you and I going to do when we stand before Him?! When I get there, I’ll have to face up to having the whole revelation of God. Finney didn’t have a bigger Bible; Wesley didn’t have a bigger Bible, but somehow they got nearer to the heart of God. They got a revelation from God, they got convictions of the Spirit and they laid their lives on the line.”

“The surest thing in the world is not death and taxes, it’s death and eternity. Yet, we’re so unconcerned.”

“Most people are bothered by those passages, which they cannot understand; the Scripture which troubles me the most is the Scripture I do understand.”

“I think one of the serious breakdowns in modern evangelism is this: it has offered too much for too little. What we do mostly is offer forgiveness. We need cleansing! There is no true conversion until a man takes up his cross.”

“Do you know what’s wrong with modern preaching? It’s missing three things: one, it has no intensity; two, it has no majesty; three, it has no eternity.”

“There are two kinds of people in the world– only two kinds. Not black or white, rich or poor, but those either dead in sin or dead to sin.”

“I still believe in the majesty of that eternal court. Oh the awesomeness of it… God will say to some, “Come ye blessed!” and (to) the rest, “Depart from Me !” I don’t want to stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ and God say to me, “I left you a book of blank checks signed in the blood of Jesus and you didn’t use half of them!”

“Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live!”

“This moment can be a turning point in your life if you not only come to the cross, but get on it! Get rid of your pettiness and your jealousy! Get rid of your erratic living that you get when you come to a conference and you’re down in a valley (the) next week! That shouldn’t happen if Christ is indwelling in me. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever! He keeps me in peace; He keeps me in joy; He keeps me in power.”